Welcome to The Tapping World Summit 2014. This is your host, Jessica Ortner. By listening to this interview you agree to the terms located at thetappingworldsummit.com/disclaimer. We hope this interview helps you become a happier and a healthier you. Enjoy.

In this interview you will learn how this summit works and everything you need to know to begin experiencing results with tapping. We recommend that you listen to this interview before listening to any of the other interviews in the summit. This really is an essential steppingstone to get you to where you want to be. If you are an experienced tapper, we hope to share distinctions that will help you take your practice to the next level.We will be speaking to the author the New York Times best-selling book, The Tapping Solution and the producer of this event, Nick Ortner. He also happens to be my brother.
Jessica: Hi Nick.
Nick: I’m good. I’m excited for this because I’m imagining all the thousands of people that are listening. For many, for the first time they’re going to learn this really incredible technique that’s free. This summit is free.

Jessica: I think a great place to start with this interview is talking about how the summit works. In this day and age when we hear free we get a little bit skeptical and we wonder what the catch is. Tell us how this summit works. Can people really listen in for free?

Nick: Yeah, absolutely. The sixth annual Tapping World Summit, I can’t believe that, 2014. Crazy. We’ve done this six times already. It’s such a fantastic event, such a pleasure to be a part of it for the last several years. As many people know, literally hundreds of thousands of people—we might be approaching a million people at this point—have listened in on these summits through the past years. A big part of them is that they are free.

The way it works is that it’s free to listen to over this ten-day period. There are two presentations per day for ten days. We start with two presentations. They’re available for 24 hours. So if you’re in the UK or Australia, it doesn’t matter where you are, you can listen at any time. Whenever you show up, the presentations start playing. Most of them run about 45 minutes to an hour long. Then you can listen to the other one. Listen again and again over that 24-hour period, and then we switch to the next presentation. It’s sort of a quasi-live event, as if you were at a weekend workshop and there are new presentations all the time, but with the added flexibility of listening from home and listening whenever you want to.Then some people choose to upgrade. They can choose to buy the audios. So for example, if they want to listen to it on their iPod or get the CDs and put them in their car, get the workbook that comes with the transcripts, all that extra fun stuff, they can make that choice. But that’s only a choice. Besides that, it’s free for everyone. Yes. It truly is a global event. We’ve gotten emails from women in Guatemala that sit together at an Internet cafe, to a young boy in China who is listening to the summit before going into exams and helping with test anxiety. It’s really incredible to think how many people are listening all over the world, and you can listen in for free.

Jessica: I think what we should do is jump into what tapping is, how it works. Then I want to hear from you how people can get the most out of this event. Let’s start with the basics. What is this tapping thing, that often seems a little bit weird because you’re tapping on points in your head. What is it?

Nick: Absolutely. I still laugh at myself when I wake up every morning and say, “I’m doing what today? I’m tapping and sharing it with the world? ! ” Tapping, otherwise known as EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, that’s the form of tapping that we’re doing. We call it tapping because we are literally tapping on endpoints of meridians on our body. We’re doing this tapping motion while saying certain statements while focusing on what’s challenging us, what the problem is, what the issue is.

Jessica: I also like to describe it as a combination of ancient Chinese acupressure, that’s a tapping component, and modern psychology.

Nick: Absolutely. What’s so great is with every different expert throughout the ten days, people have different distinctions of how they use this. But one thing is clear. It’s so easy to experience it and anyone can do it.
It’s one of the things that drew me to tapping initially. As you know, Jess, I learned it for myself personally about a decade ago and thought it was weird and was wondering what I was doing exactly. But I had an early experience where I had some neck pain that I woke up with, a crick in the neck, and I said, “Why don’t I try this tapping thing on it? I keep hearing how great it is for pain relief.” So I did. I looked up the instructions online and I was tapping through the points. The next thing I knew the pain was gone. It was an experience that I know many people have had with tapping where just five or ten minutes and you feel a shift, and something happens.

I got so excited. As you well know, Jess, I spent the next couple of years sharing it with everyone, you included. The running joke at the time, and I think you guys still tease me, was that don’t say anything is wrong around Nick because he’ll make you tap on it.

Yeah. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of a party, he will make you start tapping. It’s true.
That’s the genesis for our journey with it and making the film and writing the book and doing the Tapping World Summit. Just share the power of this technique with people because it is so powerful, as we’ll cover in just a few minutes. It works on so many different things and it’s so effective. It’s really taken the world by storm.

Jessica: Right. You talked about having that experience with pain relief. One of the reasons I think this summit has done so well and helped so many people is that people are tapping while they’re listening, and they’re experiencing the results for themselves.

Nick: One of the reasons that I was initially a bit skeptical about tapping is I heard that it worked for pain relief. For me I’d seen how it worked for struggles and things that I was having trouble letting go of, the anxiety and some anger and some different resentments and things like that. It really helped me move past a lot of things.

Jessica: But when you hear one thing works for so many other things, again, you can get a little bit skeptical because you think is this a magic pill. How does it work and how is it that tapping can work for so many different areas of your life?

Nick: Such a great question. Tapping’s been around for 30 years. It was discovered by Roger Callahan in the late ’70s. I think it was 1979. For a long time the discussion around what was actually happening, why it was working, was around the energy systems in the body and the meridian systems. Information that is likely accurate and one day we’ll see, “Wow, we can actually measure these different energy fields and we see what’s going on with the tapping.” From the more scientific perspective, what the latest research is showing, really, data that’s come in in the last couple of years, is that when we tap on these endpoints of meridians on our body, so we tap on our body while focusing on the stress, the trauma, the anxiety, the pain, whatever’s bothering us, we actually send a calming signal to the amygdala in the brain.

A lot of people will be familiar with the amygdala as the “fight or flight” response center in the brain. It’s really the stress center. It’s the place where when we get angry, when we get anxious, when we feel the stress in our body that is what’s lighting up. One of the big components of what tapping is doing is it’s deactivating that amygdala. It’s sending that calming signal. It’s releasing that stress. It’s really oftentimes re­encoding the memory, I believe, because you can have a memory of something. You don’t erase it. You still remember what happened, but you have distance from it. I sort of like to use the word charge is gone from it. The charge behind the memory is gone from it. We’re tapping on these endpoints of meridians, calming the amygdala. That underlying stress response, that amygdala firing, plays such a big role in so many aspects of our lives.

Jess, I think that we all take it for granted. If you ask people, “Are you stressed out, or is the modern day stressful? We say, “Oh yes, of course, I’m so stressed, I’m so busy.” Stress is just a part of our experience, and sadly we take that as just part of the norm, part of what we experience in our lives and it’s the way life has to be. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can truly let go of that stress, reduce it or eliminate it completely. We can release the past angers and resentments. We can let go of the things that have been holding us back for so long. If people are familiar with the patterns of procrastination or self-sabotage, we can stop these patterns. We can get to the underlying emotional issues behind it. We can get to the underlying traumatic experiences behind it. We can calm that stress response to have a different experience of life.

In this Tapping World Summit we’ll cover weight loss and we’ll cover relationships and finances, and all these other really important topics. At the end of the day, underneath all of those topics, it’s about happiness. It’s about how we enjoy life. It’s about having more fulfilling relationships, being more abundant, being pain-free in our lives, fulfilling our purpose and mission and being happy and driven and fulfilled on a daily basis. That is what I believe tapping can really make happen.

Jessica: Right. I think we’re constantly underestimating the way that stress is impacting us, mentally as well as physically. What’s been incredible through my own experience is that the more I tap the more you get it. You get that that stress is really impacting you in ways that you’ve never imagined. So it’s incredibly empowering to have this technique. Before we go into exactly how to tap, I think it helps to talk a little bit about the history; who started it and how has it evolved to where it is now.

Nick: Absolutely. I mentioned Roger Callahan, who was a psychologist in the late ’70s, who was working with a client by the name of Mary. She was a regular client. He was a traditional psychologist. She had a severe water phobia. By severe I mean not just scared of oceans and swimming, but scared of showers and baths and even drinking water. It was an out and out phobia. Roger had been working with her for about a year-and-a-half, having very little success, trying cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, the things that he had been trained in, and just wasn’t getting anywhere.

In fact, the stress of the sessions themselves, as Mary talked to Roger about her fear and phobias and where it might have started and tried to explore, just the stress itself was so much for Mary that she would walk away from all the sessions with a migraine headache. She had the water phobia to start with, and then she walked out with a migraine headache. As you can imagine, he was disappointed in the fact that he couldn’t help her. Most people in those professions are looking to help people, looking to get powerful results for their clients and their patients, and he just wasn’t getting it.

One day Mary was at his house for a session. They were sitting outside looking at his pool. They were using the pool to trigger Mary and do a little exposure therapy with it. Mary was looking at the pool and said, “You know, when I look at the pool I get this queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. It feels like butterflies in there.” As it happened, Roger the night before was reading about the meridian system in the body and had read that the stomach meridian ended underneath the eye, that there’s a point underneath the eye for the stomach meridian. So just on a whim, on an inspiration, he said, “Mary, why don’t you try tapping underneath the eye, doing a little acupressure?” She tried it. She tapped underneath the eye, and next thing you knew she says, “It’s gone.” She said, “The feeling in the pit of my stomach is gone.” She checked in on the feeling of the water phobia, and that was gone as well. She was phobia-free just like that.

It’s one of those things; you can imagine Roger’s astonishment that day, having a client for a year-and-a-half and doing this weird tapping thing and the phobia just cleared. You can imagine Mary’s astonishment, how she did this tapping and something she’s been scared of for so long she was no longer scared of. But now we know why. We know the reasons why with the amygdala in the brain and we see how by triggering that fear and then tapping she calmed the amygdala and let go of that phobia. Roger spent the next decade or so developing the tapping protocol. What he did is he had different tapping sequences for different issues. So if you had anger you would tap on certain points, if you had anxiety you would tap on other points and so forth.
One of his students by the name of Gary Craig took his system, he was actually meeting with Roger and he said, “You know, I think that if we simplify this, if we hit all the same points in a row no matter what we’re dealing with, it’s easier to remember and it’s going to work great.”

That was Gary Craig’s innovation. He developed EFT, which is a form of tapping that we now use, which is simpler in that once you learn the tapping and take a few minutes to learn it and figure out what you’re tapping on. But once you know the tapping sequence the tapping never really changes. What changes is what you’re focused on, what the challenge is, the way you approach it verbally and so forth.
Right. We like to call it tapping because everybody has their own distinctions on how to use it, but we definitely are in this summit following these nine points.

Jessica: Yeah. People ask sometimes, what’s tapping versus EFT? I like to describe the term tapping similar to a term like meditation. Tapping is a general name for everything we’re doing, which means that EFT is a form of taping and TFT is a form of tapping. Other people have their own distinctions. They’re all forms of this tapping process. Just like meditation you have all the different kinds of meditations. People have their own names for it. There’s Vipassana, there’s this, there’s that, and they’re all forms of meditation.

I think tapping is just really the umbrella term for any process where we are tapping on these endpoints of meridians while speaking out loud while focusing on a challenge. Great, Nick. I would love to jump into the tapping. For everyone that’s listening, just take a deep breath in. Get centered and ready because Nick is going to teach you how you can start tapping for yourself. Nick, take it away.

Nick: Wonderful. We’re just looking here to have a basic experience just so you can feel the shift in your body. That’s one of the great things about tapping is that it’s not something you have to spend an hour or two hours or three days learning and saying, does this really work? You’re going to feel an experience very quickly. To start with your first experience, I’d love for you to either pick two things to focus on. One is if you’re feeling physical pain in your body right now it can be a great target because it’s very easy to see a shift. You’re either in pain or you’re not in pain, or it’s going down. If you’re not feeling pain you might look for some tension in your shoulders. You might just take a second and roll around your neck and just ask yourself, if I were holding stress in my body where would it be? That can be a good place to start.

If you feel really relaxed and loose and you don’t want to focus on your body, just pick another issue. Pick something that perhaps you’ve been stressing out about the last couple of days. Pick something that happened a week ago that you just keep thinking about. Pick something you’re angry about or anxious about. Whatever comes up is great. Just pick that. You want to try to be as specific as possible with it. You don’t want to just say I’m stressed out about the world or stressed about my life. You want to say I feel angry because of what Joan said three days ago.

You want to start thinking about it. Pick the issue in your mind and try to pick it specifically. Focus on one specific aspect of it. We’ll talk about specific versus global or general a little later on. So pick the aspect.
Then we also want to give it a number on a 0 to 10 scale in terms of intensity, so 10 would be the highest intensity, 0 would be no intensity. If you have back pain you can very clearly easily probably feel it’s a 7 or an 8. Pick a number. If you’re angry about something, how angry are you? If you’re anxious, how anxious are you? Just give it a number.

Now we have the target. We have the thing that we are tapping on. Then we have the intensity. Now we’re going to do the tapping. I’m going to lead you through the tapping, and I’m going to use very general language because I obviously don’t know what you picked at home. You can tap along with me. You’ve now made the choice. You’ve made the conscious choice to focus on this issue. Even if you’re not using the same language that your issue is about, you’re going to find that you can get some benefits and get great benefits just by tapping along with the general language. Tap after me. I’ll guide you through the points. I’ll explain them. Again, if you’re confused about the points we also make a video available so you can see it even more clearly. But you’ll be able to follow along.
We start by tapping on the side of the hand. It’s called the karate chop point. We’re going to take four fingers of one hand and tap on the outside of the other hand. This is that meaty part of the hand below the pinky on the outside of the hand. You can use your right hand to tap on your left, your left on your right, whatever feels comfortable for you. By tapping I mean you’re just going to tap continuously, almost as if you were drumming on a table. We’re going to start by tapping on the side of the hand. It’s called the karate chop point. Use one hand to tap on the other, whatever hand feels comfortable for you. We’re tapping on the meaty part of the hand, below the pinky. Take four fingers on one hand and just tap continuously.

We’re going to speak a couple phrases out loud. This phrase is called the setup phrase. What we’re going to do is we’re going to say, “Even though…” and I’m going to fill in the blank a general problem. For example, we might be saying, “Even though I have back pain. Even though I’m angry. Even though I’m frustrated.” The second part of the statement is, “I love and accept myself now.” I know that might seem funny for some people. If it feels really uncomfortable you can change the statement. You can say, “I choose to relax or I choose to let it go.” But this basic setup statement is really saying, “Even though I have this problem, I accept myself with it.”

I think it’s a really important part of the process because we are acknowledging the problem, we’re doing the tapping to calm the amygdala and calm the energy system, and we’re accepting ourselves with the problem. Jess, will you be my echo as we tap along?

Jessica: All right.
Nick: Again, I’m using general language. You can use the same language I use or if you want you can change it for your specific issue. Tapping the side of the hand:

There’s some variation at the end. For example, now I’m going to say: That’s the setup statement. We’re setting it up. We’re bringing the energy forward. We’re focusing on the issue. We’re having the basic here’s the problem and I accept myself with it. The language helps us connect to the feeling, but it doesn’t have to be exact. You can say, “I love and accept myself,” “I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” If that doesn’t feel right, if you think it’s too woo-woo or wacko, you can say, “I choose to relax and let it go now.” Whatever feels comfortable for you.

Jessica: Right. This really is a setup statement. It just sets us up for the process of the tapping, and helps us get to a space where we can be really honest with ourselves.

Nick: Absolutely. Then we start tapping through the points. The first point is the eyebrow point. It’s on the inside of the eyebrow, right where the hair ends and it meets the nose. You can take two fingers of one hand, tap on one side, on the other side or on both sides. The meridians run down both sides of the body. Tap gently five to seven times. You don’t have to count. You don’t have to get it perfect. Just repeat:

Moving on to the side of the eye. It’s not the temple. It’s right next to the eye on the bone. Again, one side or both sides with two fingers:
Under the mouth. It’s above the chin, below the lip, right in that little crease in there. You want to try to make contact with the bone there:
We have three points left.
For the next point – it’s the collarbone point – you just want to feel for the two little bones of the collarbone. Then just go down an inch out to each side about an inch. You can tap with all ten fingers of both hands to make sure you get the point. Repeat again:
Now we move underneath the arm, three inches underneath the armpit, right on the bra line for women, either side of the body:
The last point is right at the top of the head. You can tap with five fingers. We do look a little funny here, but it’s worth it. Tapping the top of the head:

Let’s do one more round now that you have some of the basics of it. We go back to the eyebrow:
Take a deep breath now, and let it go. As you saw there I was obviously changing up the language saying pain, anger, anxiety. You’re not going to feel it at all, but that just shows that whatever it is that you’re going through, through those points, through the reminder phrase, you’re just tapping on really what you’re feeling.

After every round or two of tapping, so there we did two rounds – you might do five or six rounds in a row – after every round or two we want to do two basic things. One: check in on the original issue. That number that you gave before, it was a 7 or an 8. Now it’s a 6 or a 5, a 3 or a 4, whatever it is, you tune in and see how it shifted. Even a shift from an 8 to a 7 means that you’re moving in the right direction.

Then the second thing that we always do is try to pay attention to: through that process, what else came up? What other ideas, insights, memories come up as you’re doing the tapping?

The first time, right now, you’re trying to figure out how it works and focus on the points. You might not have those kinds of ideas, but when you get comfortable with the tapping, you’ll see throughout the summit as you’re tapping along, that you find that you’re tapping on one thing and then another thing comes up. Really following that process, following the intuition and what your body brings up for you is how we really peel the layers of the onion through whatever issue we’re dealing with.

Jessica: Just to be clear, we start with the setup statement. Then when we continue going through the rounds we find ourselves back at the eyebrow point. What we want to say is how we’re feeling. I want to actually talk to you a little bit about how to figure out what we’re meant to say. Throughout these ten days people are going to hear a lot of different advice from experts to help them gain clarity, but what is the point? Why are we really saying these things? If you could also answer, because some people are hesitant because they think, “Why should I say negative things, aren’t I just reinforcing them?”

Nick: Absolutely, absolutely. Let me start with the second question first, with the negative, or what I like to call “The Truth,” because what we’re doing in this process is for a short period of time speaking our truth, speaking these negative statements because they feel true to us. We’re not asking you to say, “I’m angry” if you’re not. We’re not asking you to affirm that you’re anxious if you’re not feeling that way. We’re asking you to say, “How do you feel in your body?” What’s the truth of what you feel right now? To acknowledge the anger, the depression, the anxiety, the frustration, the pain, the sadness and say, “This is true for me right now. Let me tap on it. Let me clear it out of my body. Let me calm this response.”

We didn’t get to do it in that round or two, but if we had gone longer then you can switch to positive affirmations. You can start with saying, “I’m so angry.” Then sometimes that anger switches to sadness, so you tap on some sadness. The next thing you know you start tapping and saying, “I choose to forgive. It’s time to let go. It’s time to release this from my body.”

Jessica: If we start with the positive affirmations too soon – and I know people have this experience, where they’re trying to be positive but they’re like, “I can’t be, I’m just angry.”

Nick: Exactly, exactly. We want an affirmation that feels true, or even at least partly true. If you have anger at 8 or 9 and I say to you, “Jess, I know that what they just did to you is really wrong and you’re angry at level 8 or 9, but why don’t you forgive them right now?” You’re going to say, “No, I was attacked, I’m angry ! ” But if we can acknowledge that anger, and even bring it down to a 5, that opens the door for healing. That opens the door for letting go. We’re only spending a short period of time on the anger, on the anxiety, on the pain, on the truth, on the past, whatever we feel. Then letting it go.

Jessica: Right. I often explain to people how sometimes we might be upset and we’re angry. Then we can even get angry about being angry, because we think, “I’m such an intelligent person, why am I letting this person trigger me?” Or, “How have I fallen into this old pattern again?” There’s such power in that setup statement of saying, “I accept where I am,” so you don’t keep piling up those emotions.

Nick: But also, we might logically know what we want to do or we logically know how we want to feel, but physically feeling it in our body is so different. We know this because we say, “I had a gut feeling” or, “They broke my heart” or, “They stabbed me in the back.” We intuitively know that we’re not just feeling emotions in our brain, but we’re feeling them in our body. What a great technique to create that connection, that communication between the body and the brain.

Jessica: That’s such a great point and it’s such an important one, because oftentimes we’re doing all this headwork. We’re thinking about our affirmations, and our healing, and how to change our lives, and how to create a new life, and not feeling it.

Nick: You’ll see, a lot of the presenters in the summit will talk about the body. Feeling it in the body is something that when I’m tapping with someone and they say, “I’m really angry,” I’ll ask a question like, “Where in your body are you angry?” They feel it. “Oh, it’s in my heart.” “It’s in my stomach.” They know very clearly where they’re feeling it.

Jessica: Yeah. Something else I just want to point out. When we’re tapping on the positive, people sometimes think, “I don’t understand how that works if tapping is clearing out feelings.” It’s not clearing out feelings. It’s calming that amygdala. It’s calming that center. When you’re calm it’s easy to think positive thoughts. Those negative thoughts aren’t congruent with you feeling calm.

Nick: Exactly. I also want to address your earlier question on, “How do we know what to say?” I think it’s really important in the scope of this summit, where there are 20 presentations over the ten days. You’ll see all the presenters are incredible. They’re experts in their field. They’re incredible at opening the door for you as to what to work on, what to say, what to focus on, what the challenge is.

There’s a lot of tapping in each of the sessions. People will take you through tapping on guilt and anxiety and on weight loss and on relationships, the language to use. But this language is just to open the door for you. There’s sort of two ways to do tapping. There’s what we call “global tapping” and then there’s specific tapping. Global means we’re using more general language. Let’s say we were tapping on anxiety, global tapping would be, “Even though I’m anxious, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” The specific taping would be going deeper into the event. What specifically are you anxious about? What happened that’s reminding you, that’s bringing up this anxiety?

Sometimes you don’t know exactly what’s going on and sometimes you’ve got to start with the more general tapping in order to get that clarity. When we think of an issue in our life, and especially if it’s a big issue like challenge losing weight or a difficult relationship or pain in our bodies, when we think of the whole issue, we’re so overwhelmed by all the aspects of it, everything that’s going on and all the pain and suffering we’ve experienced from it. Just starting to tap on it can bring down that anxiety, can bring down that overwhelm. Then from there we get more clarity as to what specifically is going on.

You’ll find that throughout the ten days, tap along with people, make notes as things come up. It’s great to have a pen and paper handy because someone might say something and all of a sudden five things come to mind that you want to tap on and clear out. So you can make a note of that.

Then in terms of the language itself, the more you listen the better you’ll get at languaging it for yourself. It’s more important that you actually feel the feeling than actually worry about saying the exact words. Language certainly helps us to connect to feelings. That’s why we use it here and that’s why it’s powerful. But please don’t get caught up in, “I don’t know what to say” or if, “I’m doing it right.” It’s a very forgiving process. Do the tapping. Learn where the points are exactly. That’s important. Do the tapping and tap along with the summit, and you’re going to get great results.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. One time I heard you speak in public and you said something pretty brilliant. I’ll admit it. You said something that really struck me and I thought, “Yeah, actually I think that’s our future.” You said, “I hope that when people think of tapping they think of it the same way they do of yoga or meditation.” This is something that you can incorporate. It’s a lifestyle change, so that when you have those things that impact you negatively in your life.

Nick: The reality is, we can’t control the future so we don’t know what might happen in our future, but we know that we have tools to go throughout life so that we don’t have to just surrender to feelings like anger or anxiety or depression. That we have this new tool that can guide us through and really become a lifestyle.

They asked me, “What do you see for tapping? Where do you want it to fit?” I said just my personal vision, the next step is that it’s used in that same phrase. “What do you do to improve your life, yoga, meditation, tapping?” Yoga’s so body focused and strengthening and calming. Meditation is more mentally focused and calming and healing. Tapping is sort of in between because we’re bringing up some specific issues from our life, tapping and calming the body. I think altogether they work really well. Yes. It’s amazing the way that it’s spreading. I’m so excited about this event. How can somebody really get the most out of these ten days?

The more you can listen, the better. I think there’s a lot to be said for immersion. I know people are busy. I know they have a lot going on. But when you focus over this ten-day period, when you make that commitment. Some people wake up late at night, in the morning. Find time to do it because that immersion, that focus, is where I see the most dramatic results.

Now this is the sixth year we’ve been running it. When I hear from people that they just buckled down and tapped and tapped and tapped and listened, and even listened to presentations that they didn’t think were important to them. That’s a key thing. People are like, well, I’m not trying to lose weight so I don’t need to listen to that presentation. Oftentimes when you listen to something else you’ll find insights that relate to your life. Try to listen as much as possible. Share it with your friends and family. If you have people that you can do it together with, if you have a close friend that you can encourage each other to do it and share your experiences, that can be really powerful as well.

Jessica: Wonderful. Nick, thank you so much. I’m so excited for the start of this event. I just want to remind everybody that’s listening, if you want to see a video we do provide a video on how to tap. I am so excited to get started. Nick, thank you.

Nick: Jess, thanks for having me on. Everyone, please enjoy this sixth annual Tapping World Summit. I am so delighted that you’re with us, and I’m honored that you’re having Jessica and I along and the rest of The Tapping Solution team on this journey for you. It is truly life changing and it’s world changing, and I’m excited.

Love Yourself and Tap Happy!

A lot of people will be familiar with the amygdala as the “fight or flight” response center in the brain. It’s really the stress center. It’s the place where when we get angry, when we get anxious, when we feel the stress in our body that is what’s lighting up. One of the big components of what tapping is doing is it’s deactivating that amygdala. It’s sending that calming signal. It’s releasing that stress. It’s really oftentimes re­encoding the memory, I believe, because you can have a memory of something. You don’t erase it. You still remember what happened, but you have distance from it. I sort of like to use the word charge is gone from it. The charge behind the memory is gone from it. We’re tapping on these endpoints of meridians, calming the amygdala. That underlying stress response, that amygdala firing, plays such a big role in so many aspects of our lives.

Jess, I think that we all take it for granted. If you ask people, “Are you stressed out, or is the modern day stressful? We say, “Oh yes, of course, I’m so stressed, I’m so busy.” Stress is just a part of our experience, and sadly we take that as just part of the norm, part of what we experience in our lives and it’s the way life has to be. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can truly let go of that stress, reduce it or eliminate it completely. We can release the past angers and resentments. We can let go of the things that have been holding us back for so long. If people are familiar with the patterns of procrastination or self-sabotage, we can stop these patterns. We can get to the underlying emotional issues behind it. We can get to the underlying traumatic experiences behind it. We can calm that stress response to have a different experience of life.

In this Tapping World Summit we’ll cover weight loss and we’ll cover relationships and finances, and all these other really important topics. At the end of the day, underneath all of those topics, it’s about happiness. It’s about how we enjoy life. It’s about having more fulfilling relationships, being more abundant, being pain-free in our lives, fulfilling our purpose and mission and being happy and driven and fulfilled on a daily basis. That is what I believe tapping can really make happen.

Jessica: Right. I think we’re constantly underestimating the way that stress is impacting us, mentally as well as physically. What’s been incredible through my own experience is that the more I tap the more you get it. You get that that stress is really impacting you in ways that you’ve never imagined. So it’s incredibly empowering to have this technique.

Nick: Wonderful. We’re just looking here to have a basic experience just so you can feel the shift in your body. That’s one of the great things about tapping is that it’s not something you have to spend an hour or two hours or three days learning and saying, does this really work? You’re going to feel an experience very quickly. To start with your first experience, I’d love for you to either pick two things to focus on. One is if you’re feeling physical pain in your body right now it can be a great target because it’s very easy to see a shift. You’re either in pain or you’re not in pain, or it’s going down. If you’re not feeling pain you might look for some tension in your shoulders. You might just take a second and roll around your neck and just ask yourself, if I were holding stress in my body where would it be? That can be a good place to start.

Jessica: Right. I often explain to people how sometimes we might be upset and we’re angry. Then we can even get angry about being angry, because we think, “I’m such an intelligent person, why am I letting this person trigger me?” Or, “How have I fallen into this old pattern again?” There’s such power in that setup statement of saying, “I accept where I am,” so you don’t keep piling up those emotions.

Nick: But also, we might logically know what we want to do or we logically know how we want to feel, but physically feeling it in our body is so different. We know this because we say, “I had a gut feeling” or, “They broke my heart” or, “They stabbed me in the back.” We intuitively know that we’re not just feeling emotions in our brain, but we’re feeling them in our body. What a great technique to create that connection, that communication between the body and the brain.